Noble Land Research Articles

Cultural Capital in an Early Modern Elite School: The Noble Cadet Corps in St Petersburg, 1732-1762

This study employs a unique database covering 2,293 cadets who graduated from the Noble Land Cadet Corps in St Petersburg from 1732-1762 to investigate the role of cultural capital in early modern Russia. Our analysis suggests that within this sample cultural capital was negatively correlated with wealth, but positively with father’s rank within the state service. At the corps itself, wealth and social status of families did not directly affect the success of their sons. The only significant factor of success at this school (promotion to a particular rank at graduation) was the family’s access to Western education and cultural skills. The results indicate the state was able to create an institutional framework where the possession of new imported knowledge and social skills gave the holder a measurable advantage over his peers. This could be considered one of the mechanisms which contributed to the sustainability of the cultural and social regime created by Peter I.

For Christ and Catalonia: Catholic Catalanism and Nationalist Revival in Late Francoism

Princess of our noble Catalan land Oh Virgin of the mountain … pious Mother of this land that has always loved you, make it great and powerful 1 Over the course of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain (1939–1975), we can trace a remarkable transformation in the position of the Catholic Church in the historic territory of Catalonia. Subject to deep-rooted anti-clericalism, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Church found itself the target of an unprecedented assault. The victory of Franco’s Nationalist forces in 1939 restored the Church, yet due to its Spanish Nationalist ideology, sought the ending of the Catalan Catholic tradition. However, over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the Catalan Church was able to undertake a cautious reconstruction of the indigenous religious and cultural movement. This revival would begin to transform the Church’s position in Catalan society to the point where, by the mid-1960s, it was possible to assert that anti-clericalism was no more. The Church became a key element in the revival of Catalan nationalism and an important component to the opposition in late anti-Francoism.

'Smothe and plain and al grene': Sir Orfeo's Flat Fairyland

SIR ORFEO has proven to be an attractive poem to scholars in part because of its wealth of detail: the mysterious ‘ympe-tree’, the fairy king’s crystal castle, and the gruesome assembly of mangled bodies have all captivated scholarly attention for decades.1 Given the poem’s richness, it is no surprise that at least one detail among so many seems to have escaped notice. That detail is the flatness of fairyland, apparent to Orfeo at the moment he emerges from the passage through the mountain: When he was in the roche y-go, Wele thre mile other mo, He com into a fair cuntray As bright so sonne on somers day, Smothe and plain and al grene; Hille no dale nas ther non y-sene. (349–54)2 Illic planities tractus diffundit apertos, Nec tumulus crescit, nec cava vallis hiat, Sed nostros montes, quorum iuga celsa putantur, Per bis sex ulnas eminet ille locus. (5–8)5 There a plain pours forth open tracts; no hill rises up, and no hollow valley gapes. But that place is 12 ulnae higher than those mountains whose peaks we think high. Is þæt æþele lond blostmum geblowen. Beorgas þær ne muntas steape ne stondað, ne stanclifu heah hlifiað, swa her mid us, ne dene ne dalu ne dunscrafu, hlæwas ne hlincas, ne þær hleonað oo unsmeþes wiht, ac se æþela feld wridað under wolcnum, wynnum geblowen. (20–7)6 That noble land is covered with blossoms. Neither hills nor steep mountains stand there, nor do stone cliffs tower on high (as they do here among us). There is neither hill nor valley nor dark cave, mound nor ridge, nor does any iota of unsmoothness shelter there, but the noble plain flourishes under the heavens, covered in joys. Bid comard a sliab fri fán, níba bec int athchomsán; bid clár cosmail in domun conid ressed oenubull. 9 The mountain will be as high as the hollow; there will be a great complaint; the world will be a level expanse so that a single apple might roll across it.

Encomium versus Vituperation: Contrasting Portraits of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

I. TOPIC AND HYPOTHESES Some past discussions of Johannine characters considered them either as symbolic or representative figures;1 others examined characters according to literary theory.2 This study contributes to those efforts with insights drawn from ancient rhetoric, in particular from the genre of the progymnasmata. The encomium, to my knowledge, has not been used-although it ought to be, because the encomium is the most common form in antiquity for praising person according to fixed, regular categories (origins, parents, nurture, virtues, and death). This form would most likely have been learned by the author of the Fourth Gospel at the time he learned to write materials for public persuasion. Moreover, this conventional and stereotypical3 view of persons can be found in Judean4 and Greco-Roman literature.5 The encomium, therefore, is the viewpoint of the ancients themselves, the report of native informant who indicates the conventional topics and content that need to be covered to amplify for an honorable ancient person. This study, then, is no mere add-on to Johannine scholarship but worthy contribution, because it examines the Fourth Gospel in the most likely honorable terms that author and audience would recognize. II. CONTENTS OF THE ENCOMIUM The progymnasmata were the exercises taught in the second level of education to train students for public discourse.7 Recent study of education in antiquity urges us to nuance the conventional, three-stage model found in current scholarship, which Robert Kaster summarized and to which he offered his qualifications. It is generally thought that ancient education consisted of: Kaster offers the following corrections: ancient education was a socially segmented system laid out along two essentially separate tracks. The most important formal distinction here is the division between the two tracks or segments: the ludus literrarius, providing common literacy for students of relatively humble origins on the one hand;9 and the scholae liberales, catering to more privileged part of the population on the other.10 The scholae liberales began with instruction in writing for public or municipal audience, especially the epideictic rhetoric so necessary for civic life.11 As we know, the collection of exercises for public speech and writing, namely, the progymnasmata, contained the cultural rules and values for the encomium, the literary expression of the rhetoric of and blame. Extant progymnasmata typically contain the following exercises:12 (1) myths, (2) chreia,13 (3) refutation and confirmation, (4) commonplaces on virtues and vices, (5) and vituperation, (6) comparison,14 (7) prosopopoieia,15 (8) description, (9) thesis for or against something, and (10) legislation for or against law. Although praise and blame runs through most of them, it is formally and explicitly taught in the encomium. The conventional instructs students where to find reasons and data for (or blame), which genre is widespread in Greco-Roman and Israelite literature. With great consistency, the instructed authors how to someone in terms of the following five categories: I. Origin A. Geography and Generation: country, race, ancestors, parents B. Birth: phenomena at birth (stars, visions, etc.), oracles II. Nurture and Training A. Education: teachers, arts, skills, laws, mode of life III. Accomplishments A. Deeds of the Body: beauty, strength, agility, might, health B. Deeds of the Soul: justice, wisdom, temperance, courage, piety C. Deeds of Fortune: power, wealth, friends, fame, fortune IV. Comparison V. Noble Death and Posthumous Honors Geography and Generation Each category of the was itself commonplace understood by all the ancients. All knew the basic, invariable content of origins, that is, origin in noble land (geography) and from noble stock (generation). …

Warranty and Surety in Medieval Hungarian Land Law

Substantial restrictions existed in medieval Hungarian law with respect to the alienation of noble land. Since all relatives of a landholder had rights of inheritance to his estate, alienation of the estate or of its parts required their prior consent. The difficulties involved for the individual landholder in obtaining this consent – particularly from distant cousins, minors and the unborn – made it almost impossible to ensure that any transaction was free from challenge and that it might not subsequently be rendered void by a relative's protest. Although Hungary was familiar with the institution of the warranty, warranties given at the time of alienation were not inheritable and they did not act as a bar on recovery by the alienor's relatives. In order to discourage relatives from contesting an alienation, alienors of land often ‘assumed the burdens’ of their kinsmen and made them liable to the payment of a substantial sum in the event of their protesting against the transaction. Since this device might be employed unscrupulously, its use was severely restricted in the early sixteenth century and it subsequently fell into desuetude.

The social mobility of servants in rural Sweden, 1740–1894

For most people in pre-industrial Sweden, the occupation of being a servant was not a lifetime job but a temporary one at which they tried their hand for a limited period during their lives. The Western European marriage pattern with its late age at marriage meant that most individuals spent about 10–15 years preparing for adulthood: saving up, being trained and seeking a partner for life. During this phase of their lives they worked as servants, changed employer frequently and therefore migrated.Until the late eighteenth century the social structure in the Swedish countryside was quite homogeneous. The nobility possessed large estates which formed an important source of employment. These were, however, few in number, and the dominant social groups were peasants, freeholders (skattebönder) and tenants on crown or noble land (kronobönder, frälsebönder), as well as servants in peasant households or on the estates. There were, of course, people with other occupations, but they did not constitute large social groups. Thus, servants formed a special social category, but, as I mentioned, very few people belonged to the category for life. Let us contrast this homogeneous picture with the diversified social structure in the late nineteenth century.

Nec Me Tacebit Bilbilis

Martial leant back in his chair and looked out through the open window at the fair country that lay before him. It was a noble land, this Spain that he had left so lightly all those years ago. Had he ever realized half how beautiful it was? But no good thinking of that now. Rome had drawn him as a magnet draws the iron; and, if Valeria herself had been unable to hold him, what could you expect of any landscape, however lovely? Perhaps he knew better now; but he would never have believed it, without the experience. But without doubt it was good to be home again. After all the rubs and rebuffs of life at Rome, spiced though they had been by some rare successes, there was a warm comfort in finding oneself an honoured person, with an assured position, which had not to be maintained by constant self-assertion. There had been the civic welcome on the day of his arrival and now followed the more personal and intimate renewals of acquaintance. Was he not waiting at this very moment to see Valeria for the first time since that old parting? Martial flattered himself that he was no sentimentalist, but his heart beat faster than it need have done at the thought of seeing her again.